


The Concept of Dread

by colazitron



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Cheating, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-12
Updated: 2009-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JJ hadn't thought his decision to cast Anton through to the very end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Concept of Dread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenpoints](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenpoints/gifts).



****

The Concept of Dread

+++

Anton Yelchin was the perfect Chekov. Being a pretty good director, JJ knew that. There was an air of experience about him that still didn’t manage to overshadow his wide-eyed enthusiasm and somewhat optimistic naiveté. He was also a good and hard-working actor. He was perfect for the genius Ensign that was supposed to be even younger and purer in his version of the tale.

It was also a dangerous mixture, JJ knew that as well.

Anton was young, but he wasn’t stupid. He was optimistic and had a fundamental trust in the universe, but he wasn’t actually naïve. JJ hoped his other actors would realize that and treat Anton like a fellow actor and colleague, not a toy or stuffed animal.

Because Anton was perfect in one other respect, JJ didn’t really feel comfortable admitting to himself he was looking for. He was good-looking and charming. He had a handsome face and a mind to back it up. There was a glint in his eyes that meant he could get what he wanted.

It might have been a weird method, but JJ found that movies were easiest to shoot when everyone involved was pretty. Pretty people liked themselves more. They were comfortable with themselves and others. They flirted, had one-night-stands and then moved on.

He hoped someone as young as Anton joining that routine wouldn’t mess it up.

He also considered himself lucky to be married to a wonderful wife and have three beautiful children. It made for a good “sorry, can’t” reason.

He was glad to discover – some considerable time later – that Anton had been seamlessly accepted into the beautiful people’s lurve exchange programme. He smiled to himself when he got wind that Anton didn’t really participate all that much. So maybe he still was a little more un-touched by Hollywood than JJ had originally thought.

He found Anton even more endearing than he thought. He was always curious and interested. He wanted to know everything JJ did and why he did it, how he did it, where he’d learned it. They discussed scripts from _Fight Club_ to Coppola’s _Marie Antoinette_ , looks from _Fifth Element_ to _300_ and _Sin City._ Anton was a smart young man and JJ appreciated his interest. (And maybe he basked in it a little.)

His smile slipped when he overheard Chris jokingly asking Anton whether he and JJ were doing it. Anton blushed. It was not one of those “that is so ridiculously outrageous!” blushes.

He noticed it afterwards. The lingering looks and soft and eager smiles. The way Anton seemed to be touchy-feely with most people, but more carefully so with him. Like he wasn’t sure whether it was okay to touch JJ, but he really, really wanted to do it anyway. And he was still young (holy shit, not even 19 yet!), so those conflicting emotions were rather visible on his face.

JJ gave him credit for knowing what he was doing was inappropriate. He gave himself credit for that too.

Then one day Anton seemed to have pulled through. There was a hard sort of resolve in his eyes and he didn’t touch JJ. Not at all. He still made polite conversation, he tried to keep up appearances because he understood how rumors of them having gotten into a fight after being so close before would have looked. JJ gave him credit for that, too.

Instead of laughing too loudly at something JJ said, he seemed to inhale thesauri and joined Chris and Zach in their word games. He got his hands on Zoe’s skin as much as he could and mourned the loss of Eric’s hair together with the pretty PA.

Mostly he spent a lot of time with Karl though. The two of them were constantly chasing each other around set, Karl holding up one of his prop hypos and threatening Anton to … well. Needless to say, JJ found that a little inappropriate too. It was obvious Anton and Karl knew. They flirted. A lot. Whenever Karl caught up to Anton, he would tackle him in a bear hug that made the not exactly slight Anton disappear in a mass of biceps and hands. The delighted way the young actor almost giggled made JJ look at his arms for a shameful few seconds. Next to him, Anton looked quite well-trained.

That thought wasn’t only inappropriate, it was downright scary. Somehow, along the line, Anton had crafted a connection between them that went deeper and on different levels than JJ had realized. He didn’t particularly want Anton – he couldn’t want Anton – but he didn’t want anyone else to have him, either. Not being the younger man’s center of attention was proving to be far more difficult that he had thought.

Over the next few weeks of shooting, he tried his best ignoring how the emotional attachment to Anton didn’t really weaken. He found himself watching him almost constantly in their small breaks and missing his conversation. He almost made Karl re-do a perfectly well done scene once.

He had never been so glad to end such a fantastic shoot. He didn’t want to admit it to himself either.

He spent the months of post-production in his wife’s arms, hating that he had to remind himself that he loved her far too dearly to ever do anything. Eventually he didn’t anymore and shook his little lapse of control off like one does the flu.

Then the press tour came around and JJ realized Anton really was like the flu. It was all about exposure. Stay away, you won’t catch it. Come the right season when you’re exposed to it every day, it all starts over again.

This time he drew comfort from the fact that Anton seemed to have been unable to get over the attachment too.

The hectic schedule saw them seeking comfort in each other’s familiar presence and their talks about scripts and movies and all the things Anton still wanted to do and admired JJ for doing so well. It was easy to slip back into the closeness they had shared in the first few weeks of shooting. It had been their routine once; it was easy to make it their routine again.

In Europe Anton insisted he was old enough to drink and the others decided to indulge him. They first kissed in Vienna and JJ thought at least it hadn’t been Paris. The champagne at the Gala had been good; the kind that tasted delicious and got to your head twice as quick without you noticing. Still, he knew neither he nor Anton were drunk enough to blame it on the alcohol when Anton had stepped up too close to him in the dark corner of the balcony. He had set down his glass on the balustrade calmly and just as calmly placed JJs next to it. He leaned down a little to touch his hand to JJ’s cheek ever so lightly and place one feathery kiss on his lips.

He didn’t bother blushing or apologizing because JJ knew anyway. Instead he just handed JJ his glass and didn’t even watch him leave when he walked back inside. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Anton light up a cigarette.

The next time there was no alcohol involved, but Anton’s hand clenched in his dress shirt and crumpled it a bit. He seemed desperate. JJ let him press their lips together, imagining he could see the same guilt he felt in wide open gray eyes opposite him.

After the third time, Anton drew back. He seemed to be a wounded animal licking its wounds and JJ got angry at him for daring to appear so bruised. What did he have to lose? He wasn’t the married director that would be called a pedophile and lose all possibilities of a career should any of this get out. He wasn’t the one cheating on a ten plus years marriage.

He understood when Karl pulled him aside. “What you’re doing isn’t right. You shouldn’t encourage him.” Whatever he had said to Anton, somehow JJ was convinced it had been even worse. He knew that Karl was right though. This thing with Anton and him had to stop. He had to stop it.  
He probably should have made that resolution months ago, before he had become hooked.

They stopped touching again. And it was terrible. JJ felt full of red matter, waiting to implode and destroy him. He could feel Anton gravitate towards it. They resisted it as well as they could. Anton caught the actual flu and stayed in hotel rooms for most part of the next weeks, being weak, miserable and throwing up periodically. He was scared of visiting him. They were both on edge, but Anton was so worn down, JJ couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t start throwing furniture at each other out of accusations about unrequited love.

_Love?_

He visited Anton anyway, to make sure it wasn’t, in fact, love. They didn’t throw furniture at each other. JJ came down Anton’s throat, trying not to think of all the things that had passed through that mouth twice in the last week.

It wasn’t like either of them had provoked the other, no one had made an actual move. They had kept an appropriate distance and talked of appropriate subjects. Smalltalk, no more. Anton had even inquired after Katie and the kids to keep them between them like a shield. It had always worked before. This time, they had moved through them like they weren’t even there, Anton sinking to his knees, JJ opening his fly. No questions asked, no comments made.

JJ felt like whore talking to Katie and their little ones over the phone that evening. He didn’t even want to imagine how Anton felt.

Karl looked like he knew. He dragged Anton along with him a lot or seemed to make sure that someone else always did. He probably didn’t know and was just trying to help them, but JJ found that this sort of interference made it harder. Seeing Anton, talking to him, made it easier. Even if he wasn’t touching him. Undergoing a full withdrawal made him feel off balance. Deprived.

They were jerking, pulling, pushing each other along deeper into this whenever they did meet after not having had a minute to themselves for days. Even when nothing happened – and that was far more often the case – there were looks that passed between them that communicated the longing, needing, and knowledge of the wrongness better than words could have hoped to do.

During a particularly sweet kiss that almost tasted a little like happiness, JJ found himself not thinking of Katie. When the thought hit him, an hour later, he almost picked up the phone to call her and confess everything. He was pretty sure he hated himself more than Anton that moment.

The next time he did talk to Katie, the guilt had dulled. Realizing that he had gotten so used to constantly thinking of Anton when they talked, of all the ways he thought he’d blunder and never did that it almost felt normal, made him feel sick and a little dead.

They only ever came close to doing it once. It was the last day of their press tour and Karl had kept them apart for days. Anton had found himself too young to go club-hopping with the rest of the cast, JJ told them he felt too old and he’d rather get a good night’s sleep. They hadn’t even planned on doing anything. But when they rode the elevator up together, the realization of what could happen hit them both so hard, they were a little dizzy.

Anton stumbled to his door and he and JJ fell through it, a tangle of limbs. The door slammed shut with the force of Anton’s kick, JJ pulled at his t-shirt collar, dragging him to the bed. They landed on top of it, arms wound around each other, lips attached, kissing like they hadn’t kissed before. Open-mouthed, tongues, biting. Anton rolled up over him and started unbuttoning his shirt, as JJ reached for Anton’s belt. He opened it and pulled it out of the loops, undoing the buttons on the front of Anton’s jeans before rolling them around and grinding his hard on down into Anton’s. The young man’s moan was positively sinful. He dropped the belt and it slid off the bed, landing on the floor with a surprisingly loud “clonk”, making them jump apart.

Anton wasn’t blushing now either, but his cheeks were flushed. He opened his mouth to speak though. JJ didn’t want to hear what he had to say. No _sorries_ , no _I love yous_ , no _let’s end this’s_. So he leaned down and kissed him good-bye.

+++


End file.
